What to Do When Your Spiritual Hero Falls

Our response to situations like this should be one of confession and humility. We should confess our sins, our respectable sins and our secret sins. We should also recognize that we are just as susceptible to disqualifying sin as pastor x and pursue accountability structures and relationships. No magic bullets. Be killing sin or sin will be killing you.

The American Protestant church (especially the most conservative denominations?) seems to have an unhealthy relationship with preaching, the platform, and the longing for popularity. We are reaping the fruit of what we have sown.

The American Protestant church (especially the most conservative denominations?) seems to have an unhealthy relationship with preaching, the platform, and the longing for popularity. We are reaping the fruit of what we have sown.

I agree. I get real nervous when I see the same guy coming up over and over again and I agree with so many of the things he is saying. I get even more nervous when he is saying the things I want people to hear on a number of issues and his influence keeps growing and growing. I would feel way safer if there were way more people spread over a wider geographic area who were saying the right things. Then if one of them fell, there would be far less damage. I have never been a guru guy, but there are clips of a solid preacher that have been going viral lately. I wish he would use that platform to share the messages but have others deliver those messages so that he was not front and center all the time. Then if one of the men- or that man- fell, the messages could still hold greater impact. The man I am thinking of pastors a large enough church, that there are plenty of other staff who should be qualified to deliver the message. If they are not, then he needs to get off the internet and find qualified men for his church. My guess is that much of his subject matter is coming from others anyway. Why not put them in front of the camera and trust God with the results?

I hate to have to say this, but as I consider some of the people who have fallen from their ministry positions, a huge portion of the time, it's people where there were clear signs that something was amiss. Perhaps not amiss in the way they got found out, but I often/generally see things where there is a moral breach that people are looking past.

For example, with Doug Philips and Vision Forum, there was a moral compromise that few people objected to; he ran the company on intern labor that was low wage or outright unpaid--in other words, the business case for VF didn't work. More or less, he took advantage of the young in his business, and he got caught later, well, taking advantage of another young person in another way.

(side note; with no experienced people at VF, the company was "bulimic", failing to keep items in stock, buying huge quantities of stock they couldn't sell /"binging", and then "purging" periodically to get rid of excess inventory)

There were a fair number of other ethical concerns I had with them, more or less related to shortcuts to business solvency.

Another example would be First Baptist of Hammond, where Jack Schaap's legal troubles were hinted at STRONGLY by his signature sermon "polishing the shaft."

Other examples of people who've given strong hints about this would include Mark Driscoll, James MacDonald, and a host of others, and a common theme is "let's get big" instead of "let's be faithful with the resources He gives us."

Don't need heroes

Mark Mincy wrote: The American Protestant church (especially the most conservative denominations?) seems to have ...

As opposed to any other segment of society? I wonder if anyone actually did a study of this whether they would find more instances of failure among conservatives or liberals, protestants or Catholics. Etc.

It is easy to make a blanket statement. I doubt that it is characteristic of any one group more than another.

Rather it is the fruit of the sin nature and opportunity. Since a public persona may have more opportunities, there may be more failure among them than among the general population. But even there ... I kind of doubt it.

To say "you too" is to use a "tu quoque" fallacy, Don. Yes, there are a lot of others who have the same problems, but that doesn't let us off the hook. More or less, if we're going to be salt and light to the world, well, we'll stick out a bit, no?

Bert Perry wrote: Yes, there are a lot of others who have the same problems, but that doesn't let us off the hook.

The point is that Mark was alleging that we are somehow worse than others because of the nature of how we organize and lead our churches. That's ridiculous, quite frankly. I'm not saying it isn't a problem and that we shouldn't be concerned about it. I am saying we shouldn't make ridiculous pronouncements that sound wise but aren't true.

Don, we probably are more suspect, to be honest. There are a lot of small and medium sized churches in our movement, but consider the prevalence of mega-churches in "fundagelicalism" versus in other areas of Christianity. Consider the number of "big names" that we've got; now compare with how many names we could similarly name among the Methodists, Episcopalians, and the like. Having grown up Methodist, one thing I've learned is that a lot of districts cycle pastors from church to church precisely to avoid churches becoming the "petty fiefdom" of a particular man. (it has its disadvantages too--you don't get the continuity you get when a man stays for decades)

Then you've got the intellectual fads and parachurch ministries. So there is a fine line between "respect for those with great achievement" and "guys who sell so many books they don't hire editors anymore."

On a parallel note, my brother and sister-in-law are both big "Harry Potter" fans, and he's noticed that after a certain book, they're about 50% fatter--that's when Rowling more or less said "if you want your share of the royalties, we're not going to edit these anymore in any serious way." Along the same lines, I remember reading a book by James MacDonald ("Authentic" if memory serves), and the errors in it were so pervasive, I had to wonder whether Moody actually employed any editors. Certainly not any editors who had the power to say "we're not publishing with this error".

So the challenge is to persuade publishing houses and others that they need to accept short-term financial difficulty (e.g. a fundagelical Rowling/Macdonald taking their work elsewhere) in exchange for the long-term benefit of known credibility.